I had the honour recently of attending a roundtable conference hosted by an ex-PhD student at the Buddahpadipa temple in Wimbledon in recognition of his recent appointment as Abbot. It was a very inspiring event in which monks alongside lay members and visitors to the temple were all asked to reflect on four questions thatContinue reading “Self, Myself, and I”
Category Archives: Religion
Looking Back to when Religion was Golden
I am currently wading my way through J. G. Frazer’s multi-volume Golden Bough. I always tell my students about the importance of reading the original text, rather than relying on other people’s summaries or even the popular edited versions. So, I am now in the middle of many different examples of May Kings and MayContinue reading “Looking Back to when Religion was Golden”
Exploring the Idea of Regionalism in Religion
One of the books I read over Christmas was Susan Vogel’s book on the Baule, based on an exhibition at Yale in 1997. It was not so much the art that struck me, or really the ethnographic details of the Baule, although that did illuminate certain elements of our visit to Ivory Coast back inContinue reading “Exploring the Idea of Regionalism in Religion”
A Sociology of the Story in the Study of Religion
My next writing project is to be a book on ‘myth’. This is part of the wider project to produce a ‘general theory of religion’ that I have been working on since the mid-nineteen-nineties. The overall structure of the project has hardly changed at all, the details of the individual elements continue to develop. AtContinue reading “A Sociology of the Story in the Study of Religion”
Celebrating Easter 2020
Just before Easter I had a zoom conversation with a Muslim professional. He said that he had read that I was a man of faith and therefore asked how I was going to celebrate Easter. I replied that Easter was the highlight of the Christian year, more so than Christmas, and that it was aContinue reading “Celebrating Easter 2020”
Once Upon a Time
As I begin this blog, I have just finished reading Tomoko Masuzawa’s In Search of Dreamtime, The Quest for the Origin of Religion. So, what better place to begin than on origins. Masuzawa wonders at the way in which the modern study of religion has rejected the nineteenth century obsession with origins as an explanationContinue reading “Once Upon a Time”
Martin Stringer Quartet 